Kill two birds with one stone, To To accomplish two things with a single action. The Italian equivalent is Prendere due piccioni con una fava, 'To catch two pigeons with one bean'; for the Germans it is Zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen, 'To swat two flies at once'; and for the Russians Ubit' dvukh zaytsev odnim udarom, 'To kill two hares with a single blow'.#3628•
Swansong In classical times it was believed that swans are born mute, and remain so all their lives until the moment before their death, when they burst into beautiful, elegiac song. A 'swansong' came to mean a final, valedictory performance.#3629•
Chapter 32
Yahoo Jonathan Swift's name, in Gulliver's Travels (1726), for brutes with human forms and vicious propensities. Swift may have based the word on a blend of the two exclamations of disgust, 'yah!' and 'ugh!'#3599•
Chapter 35
When the fat lady sings When everything is finally over. The full expression runs: 'The opera's never over till the fat lady sings.' The reference is to the final act of the opera, in which the heroine often appears. Opera singers are stereotypically endowed with figures as full as their voices.#3606•
Chapter 36
Manna The miraculous food provided for the children of Israel on their journey from Egypt to the Holy Land. The word is popularly said to be derived from Aramaic man-hu ('what is this?'), but it is probably Hebrew mān, the term for the honey-like secretion of a plant bug that congeals in the evening but melts in the sun.#3607•
Chapter 37
Elysium In Greek mythology, the abode of the blessed. Hence the Elysian Fields, the paradise or 'happy land' in Greek poetry, whose name translates Greek Ēlusion pedion, 'plain of the blessed'. The Champs-Élysées ('Elysian Fields') is an imposing central thoroughfare in Paris.#3611•
Pandora's box A present that seems valuable but that in reality is a curse. Pandora was sent by Zeus as a gift to Epimetheus, who married her, against the advice of his brother Prometheus. She brought with her a large jar or vase (Pandora's box), which she opened and all the evils flew forth, and they have ever since continued to afflict the world. Hope alone remained in the box.#3592•
Chapter 38
Museum Literally, a home or seat of the Muses. The first building to have this name was the university erected at Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter about 300 BC.#3613•
Pan In Greek mythology, the god of pastures, forests, flocks, and herds, and also the universal deity. He is traditionally represented with the upper part of a man and the body and legs of a goat, and with little goat horns on his head. The medieval image of the Devil was based on him. His name comes from the Greek, meaning 'all', 'everything'.#3595•
Chapter 39
Pluto In Greek mythology, one of the titles of Hades, the ruler of the underworld, the kingdom of the dead. His Greek name Ploutōn meant literally 'wealth-giver', wealth being seen as coming out of the earth. A plutocracy is therefore a government based on wealth not merit.#3610•
Chapter 40
Hand of glory, The In folklore, a dead man's hand, preferably one cut from the body of a man who has been hanged, soaked in oil and used by witches for its special magical properties. The poet Robert Graves wrote that 'hand of glory' is a translation of the French main de gloire, itself an alteration of mandragore, the plant mandragora (mandrake), whose roots had a similar magic value.#3602•
Chapter 41
Dog in the manger, A A person who prevents another enjoying something but does not enjoy it themselves. The allusion is to the fable of the dog that made his home in a manger. He would not allow the ox to come near the hay, even though he would not eat it himself.#3598•
Job's comforter A person who means to sympathize with you in your grief but implies that you brought it on yourself and so adds to your sorrow. The allusion is to the rebukes the biblical Job received from his friends: 'I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all' (Job 16:2).#3600•
Chapter 42
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
QUENTIN CRISP: Manners from Heaven#3604•
Meiosis A figure of speech in which an impression is deliberately given that a thing is of less size or importance than it actually is. An example is the typical English understatement 'rather good', said of something that is excellent, or 'rather a setback', said of a major disaster. A famous modern meiosis was Harold Macmillan's 'little local difficulty' following the resignation of his entire Treasury team.
In biology, the term denotes a type of cell division in which four new cells are created, each containing half the number of chromosomes of the original.
Meiosis is essential for sexual reproduction in animals and plants.
The word is from the Greek, meaning 'lessening'.#3605•
Chapter 43
Esprit de l'escalier (French, 'staircase wit') The rejoinder that comes too late; the witty retort that occurs to one after the moment has passed. The original reference was to the afterthought that occurred to a person when going downstairs from the salon to the street door.#3608•
Halcyon days Times of happiness and prosperity. Halcyon represents Greek alkuōn, 'kingfisher', popularly derived from hals, 'sea', and kuōn, 'conceiving'. It was once believed that the kingfisher incubated its eggs for 14 days on the surface of the sea, during which period, before the winter solstice, the waters were always calm.#3609•
Chapter 45
Play gooseberry, To To be an unwanted third person when two lovers are together. The origin of the phrase may derive from the tact of the person occupying the time in picking gooseberries while the others were more romantically occupied.#3601•
French letter A euphemism for a condom. The French themselves call a condom a capote anglaise, 'English cap'.#3593•
Kill two birds with one stone, To To accomplish two things with a single action. The Italian equivalent is Prendere due piccioni con una fava, 'To catch two pigeons with one bean'; for the Germans it is Zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen, 'To swat two flies at once'; and for the Russians Ubit' dvukh zaytsev odnim udarom, 'To kill two hares with a single blow'.#3624•
Kill two birds with one stone, To To accomplish two things with a single action. The Italian equivalent is Prendere due piccioni con una fava, 'To catch two pigeons with one bean'; for the Germans it is Zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen, 'To swat two flies at once'; and for the Russians Ubit' dvukh zaytsev odnim udarom, 'To kill two hares with a single blow'.#3627•
Chapter 46
Fuck 'Fuck' contains four letters in search of an etymology. It is, sadly, easy to dismiss the popular myth that 'fuck' is an acronym, said to have arisen during a time of plague when the population was in perilous decline, prompting the monarch to instruct all fertile couples to go forth and procreate.
These couples would hang a sign outside their house to warn against disturbance, because they were engaged in Fornicating Under Command of the King.
There is no evidence at all to support this, and a possible, darker, source is the Latin pugnare, 'to fight'.
Many of the earliest references to 'fuck' involve hitting people rather than having sex.
If this is indeed the root of the word, then the meaning was perhaps extended to reflect a misogynistic view of man's power over women.#3594•
Chapter 47
Grey matter A pseudoscientific name for the brain, used generally to mean common sense. The active part of the brain is composed of a greyish tissue, which contains the nerve endings.#3612•
Chapter 49
Hobson's choice No choice at all. The saying derives from Thomas or Tobias Hobson (c.–1631), a Cambridge carrier well known in his day (John Milton commemorated him in two epitaphs), who refused to let out any horse except in its proper turn.#3603•
Chapter 50
Syphilis The hero of a Latin poem by Girolamo Fracastoro, Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus ('Syphilis, or the French Disease'), published in 1530. In the poem the shepherd Syphilis (the name comes from the Greek suphilos, 'lover of pigs') angers the god Apollo and is struck down by a new and highly infectious disease.
The name of the poem's protagonist later became associated with the venereal disease.#3626•